With Covid-19 on the resurgence in many countries, this drawing by a fan called Keroromo, shared with me early into lockdown, seems sadly more timely than ever. It depicts Darren, Mr Crepsley and Gavner Purl -- I'm not sure if it's the lockdown that has stressed out Mr Crepsley, or Gavner's snoring!! :-)

My son Dante is due to go back to school next week, and like parents everywhere, Mrs Shan and I are worrying about how that's going to go. The government in Ireland has done a pretty good job overall of keeping down the Covid-19 cases, but there have been a few big outbreaks recently, which is troubling. The staff at his school are as on top of it as the staff at any school can be, so we've full confidence in them -- but no one can know for sure how this will play out until we're a few months in. I was reading through the new list of school guidelines a few days ago and for a few moments it just all seemed so overwhelming. I had to step back, take a deep breath, remind myself that we WILL get through this, then returned to it in a calmer mood.

I think a lot of us have faced moments like that over the last several months, when the weight of the world seems to be pressing down on us. I've had quite a few people ask me if the pandemic has given me any good ideas for stories -- indeed, many seem to assume that this is a ripe old time for me on the creative front. But funny as it might seem, I've no interest at all in writing about a group of characters who are stuck indoors watching too much TV! :-) Besides, I've already DONE all my pandemic writing -- and I'm not just talking about Zom-B, when killer viruses are a key part of the plot.

If you look back through all my work, the one overriding message that runs through pretty much my entire oeuvre is that no matter how bad things get, we can always overcome the odds stacked against us. As a species, we've survived far worse than Covid-19 in the past, and will survive probably far worse in the future. We're good at battling through and coming out the other side. So, if the times are getting you down and you're feeling kind of glum, think back to when Darren was being washed through the heart of Vampire Mountain are failing his trials... to when Grubbs was locked up in hospital after the brutal massacre of his parents... to when B Smith watched with horror as her heart was ripped from her chest.

They bounced back from those major setbacks, and we'll all bounce back too. Trust me -- I'm a story teller -- I know about these things... :-)